: 685 

.T47 

Copy 1 THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS 



SPEECH 



HON. JOHN THOMPSON 



„•" 



OF NEW YORK 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



MARCH 31, 185 



9\ 



% 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

UELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTER! 

1858. 



- /, (,': 



SPEECH OF MR. THOMPSON. 



Mr. Chairman : He who mingles in 
a conflict in which the fanaticism of pas- 
sion has been awakened on the one hand, 
and the fanaticism of interest on the other, 
each forgetful of its opponent's rights, 
and is just enough and bold enough to tell 
onl}^ the truth, without coloring or abate- 
ment, occupies a post at once of respon- 
sibility and of peril ; he is sure to satisfy 
neither party while he rebukes both, and, 
like a peacemaker in the heat of battle, 
may fall under the shot of both lines, of 
which he is deemed to be equally the en- 
emy. Week after week have we listened 
to moral lectures on the evils of Slavery, 
from one party, met by a recital of its 
blessings, its Divine authority, and threats 
of disunion if its political influence is 
abated, from the other party. Each ac- 
cuses the other of designs to subvert its 
rights. The North fears she is to be sub- 
jugated by the South ; the South fancies 
she is to play the part of conquered prov- 
inces, chained to the chariot wheels of 
Northern aggression. Higher and higher 
rises the cry of warning, remonstrance, 
and intimidation ! Sir, is this fanatical 
game to go on unlimited and unrebuked? 
Is no man bold enough to step between 
the parties, and as a " Day's man," lay 
his hand upon them both? Shall each swell 
the waves of excitement from the North 
and South, until, as the wild surges meet 
on this Capitoline Hill, this structure of 
strength and beauty (emblematical of the 
institutions it symbolizes) is swept away, 



leaving not one stone upon another, and 
time's latest and best empire prove, after 
all, the frailest ? God forbid ! Though 
coming from the Empire State, and rep- 
resenting a district second to none in pa- 
triotic loyalty and political intelligence, 
it is well known I am no political Abo- 
litionist, nor desirous of meddling with 
the domestic institutions of the South, 
wherever they lawfully exist. As a 
statesman, I have no right here to in- 
trude even my advice, because it may 
exasperate where it cannot cure. When 
they desire my counsel, they will proba- 
bly ask it, and it will then be time enough 
for me to express my sentiments as a 
Christian, or philanthropist, upon this 
creature of local law. As such it doubt- 
less has its rights, under the provis- 
ions of existing laws, as well as security 
in the States where it is established. 
This institution, however abhorrent to 
Northern sentiment, is the growth of a 
century, and a century may elapse ere 
this Republic, under the wisest, calmest 
counsels, may witness its extinction. 
But for the interference of party politics, 
four, and perhaps five. States, where it 
now exists, would have abolished it, after 
the example of their sisters at the North. 
It is not necessary to say what I would 
do, should this or that case arise in the 
developments of Providence, and in the 
history of my country — no wise court 
pronounces judgment on a case not be- 
fore it. Enough, that I feel bound to 



stand by the law of the land and the 
compromises of the Constitution! So 
much on the one hand. On the other, 
I am no Slavery propagandist. I do not 
see in this thing that expansive element 
that is in danger of becoming straitened 
for room, and is casting about for new 
fields of enterprise, lest it should be 
driven in upon itself, and perish by a sort 
of spontaneous combustion ! On the con- 
trary, it existed at the Declaration of 
Independence in all the thirteen States 
of the Union. It has been dying out at 
the North, instead of expanding ; it can- 
not live in a Northern atmosphere; it 
perishes by the side of free labor, where 
ideas of social equality and equal politi- 
cal privileges so extensively prevail ; it 
was ejected, not simply from humani- 
tarian motives, but from those of econ- 
omy to the master, and of vigor to the 
State, which is always weakened by the 
existence in it of a Helot race. Where 
every gentleman is a working man, and 
every working man a gentleman, there is 
no need of involuntary servitude. Labor 
is dignified, as well of the hand as of the 
head ; and the toiling millions, who form 
the substratum of the social edifice, toil 
freely, cheerfully, for themselves and 
their children, and in the next generation 
stand on the topmost round of the ladder. 
Our "sills," at the North, are of gran- 
ite and marble, and not " mud," and are 
therefore capable of being wrought into 
polished shafts and capitals, to adorn 
even this national temple with graceful- 
ness and beauty. 

We may speculate forever upon the 
superiority and inferiority of races, and 
upon the adaptation of color to clime. 
Sugar, tobacco, and cotton, have a vigor- 
ous grasp, which Northern and European 
consumption strengthens and tightens. 
We have no right to be impatient, denun- 
ciatory, or meddlesome. God only can 
solve this problem, which elongates its 
shadow beyond human ken, and in the 
mean time the master should remember 
that he is responsible to his servant and 
his Maker for every ray of intelligence 
he withholds, and every social and reli- 
gious enjoyment he denies to this crea- 



ture, whose body and soul are alike in 
his keeping. 

At the North, the physical condition 
and moral elevation of the free people of 
color is not yet what philanthropy had 
hoped; and, moreover, a fearful diminu- 
tion has taken place in their numbers, by 
disease, by poverty, by thriftlessness, 
by the social pressure of the white upon 
the negro, of the superior upon the infe- 
rior. That population is disappearing, 
until a few years hence they will, by an 
inevitable law, which seems to enfold 
them and the Indian alike, pass out of 
the vision of the Northern eye. With a 
different climate and relation as to num- 
bers with a white population, emancipa- 
tion would have been more tardy, and its 
results an unsolved problem. 

However political parties may fight 
against it, the population of the Terri- 
tories will be ultimate judges of what 
institutions they will establish, and Con- 
gress will admit them under the provis- 
ions of the Constitution. 

Up to this hour, more than one hun- 
dred speeches have been made upon this 
floor, in reference to the affairs of Kan- 
sas ; those who urge her admission doing 
it on the ground, chiefly, that a majority 
of her legal people ask such admission 
under the Lecompton Constitution ; that 
it will allay the Slavery agitation of the 
country ; that it is necessary to give to 
that institution a wider area ; that the 
balance of power between the North and 
the South can be only thus preserved ; 
and that, without this, there is imminent 
danger that several, if not all, of the 
Southern States will withdraw from the 
Union ! On the other hand, it is urged 
that the people of Kansas have from the 
beginning been circumvented and over- 
borne by a foreign domination ; that they 
are opposed to the permanent and con- 
stitutional establishment of Slavery 
among them ; that the adoption of this 
Constitution will create wider and fiercer 
agitation, resulting in civil war ; that 
the idea of a balance of power in the 
General Government between the two- 
thirds and one-third is an unjust and 
obsolete idea; that power must follow 



population ; and that greater peril to tlie 
Union will result from the admission 
than from the rejection of this Territorj'- 
with this Constitution ; these, with many 
auxiliary and minor points, have been 
urged with great talent, zeal, and sin- 
cerity. I regret that honorable mem- 
bers, in the heat of debate, have some- 
times indulged in the language of menace 
and intimidation, language always un- 
suited to the discussion of topics so grave 
and interests so momentous. It is not 
by threats or taunts, upbraidings or in- 
sult, nor b_y invidious comparisons, thatwe 
are to work out a solution of this difficult 
theme. To my mind there are presented 
questions of greater imm.ediate interest, 
than whether Kansas shall be admitted 
with a Constitution establishing or rec- 
ognising Slavery, for no man who knows 
anything of the tough hardihood and grit 
of the American character and will, can 
be doubtful of that issue, whether the 
knot is eventually cut by legal or mar- 
tial weapons. If we do a great wrong 
to Kansas, she has power enough, mate- 
rial and moral, to right her wrongs, and 
the will to do it ; from her position, en- 
vironments, climate, population, educa- 
tional and industrial forces, her State 
policy must eventually be a free policy, 
as well as that of Missouri, by her side, 
and no constitutional barriers or Federal 
armies can prevent it. If not stamped 
upon her institutions in their inception, 
for any cause, that policy will Avork on, 
repressed, 3'-et omnipotent, until it leaps 
forth, like smouldering fire, to consume 
its fetters, and bathe the whole land- 
scape in its light ! But, sir, in the rapid 
unfoldings of this drama, it has con- 
stantly gathered in importance, and as- 
sumed aspects more portentous, becoming 
not simply a question of free or slave 
policy in a Territory, but one deep, 
broad, vital as the foundations of popu- 
lar government, underlying the entire 
fabric of our national institutions, and 
to determine, in its issues, whether the 
popular will is to respected — whether 
Government is longer to derive its powers 
from the consent of the governed — 
whether fair dealing or fraud shall be 
the rule— whether our Chief Executive 



is a public servant or a despot — whether 
our Government is one of law or of 
force — whether the people shall govern 
themselves, or be ruled by a standing 
army in time of peace — whether the open 
and shameless violation of all the deco- 
rum and decencies of political institu- 
tions, promising the people tliat through 
the ballot-box their voice shall be heard, 
and falsifying it by the double crime of 
forgery and perjury, shall terminate in 
success or in detection and defeat. These 
are questions now looming up before us, 
and soon to receive a practical adjust- 
ment ; for if our free institutions are 
prostituted to despotic ends ; if men in 
office can defy the popular voice and 
triumph ; if history can be falsified, facts 
perverted, violence and cruelty meet 
with approval ; if a President, or party, 
or both, can defy and trample upon the 
people's rights, and come off victorious — 
then indeed have we fallen upon evil 
times ; then is this whole fabric of civil 
government, for which so much blood 
has been shed, so much treasure ex- 
pended, so many prayers offered, and 
with which humanity's progress and the 
world's hopes are linked, suffering dis- 
aster and derangement, and imperilled 
by shocks it cannot long survive. In 
view of these questions, it is compara- 
tively immaterial what the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution proposes to establish, 
whether servitude or a millennium, its 
precedents, its surroundings, its authors 
and abettors, write all over it the record 
of its condemnation. Yet it has been 
twice recommended by the President for 
adoption by Congress, as the basis of 
admission. It has been published ; it is 
before us and the country, a document 
so singular and anomalous in its provis- 
ions, so pregnant with the doublings of 
political trickery, so fortified against ab- 
rogation or amendment, so hedged about 
by test oaths and double entendres, so 
prodigal of grace in one direction and so 
niggardly in another, that we agk invol- 
untarily, is this the spontaneous expres- 
sion of a free people 1 And we are an- 
swered, by their Delegate here, by their 
public meetings and prints, by their 
legislative expressions and protests, in a 



voice we cannot mistake, pronouncing it 
a spurious document, not emanating in 
any sense from the people of Kansas ; 
an outrage and a sham, in its inception, 
progress, and consummation ; a stupen- 
dous swindle upon popular rights and 
sovereignty; a fraud, not only upon 
every principle involved in the ordinary 
mode of originating and perfecting State 
Constitutions, but equally so upon the 
peculiar creed and pledges under which 
it is pretended to be framed. 

I. — The Organic Act conferred no power 
upon the Territorial Legislature to 
call a Convention. 

Sixty men, calling themselves the Le- 
compton Convention, framed this Con- 
stitution. From whom did they derive 
their authority? from the Territorial 
Legislature ! What authority resided 
in this Legislature to originate such a 
Convention 1 Was it conferred by Con- 
gress, whose special agent, with limited 
powers, this Legislature is? No such 
authority can be shown ; and the settled 
doctrine, both as it respected Arkansas 
and Michigan, was heretofore that all 
such exercise of power to originate a 
Co7isti{ution, was, in the language of 
James Buchanan, in 1820, '■^nothing but 
usurpation ! " To make it legal, to 
give it the form and show of a regular 
procedure, the power must emanate from 
Congress; for, to Congress is the gov- 
ernment of the Territories alone com- 
mitted ; and, unless somewhere in the 
organic act the Territorial Legislature 
were authorized to set on foot measures 
to originate a State Constitution, it is as 
much a usurpation to propose one for 
Kansas, as if this same Convention had 
proposed one for Arizona or Utah ! It 
has been contended, by gentlemen on the 
other side, that by the twenty-fourth 
section of the Kansas-Nebraska act, 
the legislative power of the Territory 
is declared to extend " to all right- 
ful subjects of legislation,^' and that 
the authorization of a Convention is 
one of them. But by what rule is 
this act made one of them? Being 
a Territorial Legislature, its func- 
tions are purely Territorial, and cannot 



reach beyond those subjects which are 
strictly such. Who gave it power to 
originate acts which contemplate its own 
extinction ? No legislative body can do 
that indirectly, which it cannot do di- 
rectly. Could it lawfully pass an act 
terminating its own existence ? Such an 
act would be essentially revolutionarj^ — 
not in pursuance of, but hostile to, the 
purposes of its creation. So far from 
being in the Territorial Legislature, it 
is not even in the people of Kansas, who 
are under the wing of the General Gov- 
ernment, and can exercise no powers of 
a political character not conferred upon 
them by the laws of the United States. 
If such a Constitution is presented, it is 
of no higher force or authority than a 
petition ; it binds no one, it concludes 
no one ; it is no estoppel upon the peo- 
ple to remonstrate ; it is no pretence in 
the face of objection for Congress to act. 
I know it is said that it has not been 
deemed material heretofore how a State 
Constitution originated, provided the 
people were agreed. But while this is 
true, it in no way impairs the force or 
validity of the objection to this Consti- 
tution, that it comes from a source en- 
titled to no consideration as a duly-con- 
stituted body with power to originate it. 

Says the President, in his message : 
'' The Convention to frame a Constitu- 
' tion for Kansas met on the first Mon- 
' day of September last. They were 
' called together by virtue of an act of 
' the Territorial Legislature, w^hose law- 
' ful existence [not power] had been rec- 
' ognised by Congress in different forms 
' and by different enactments." Well, 
suppose this to be all true, may not a 
Territorial Legislature exist, and per- 
form all its functions as such, in carrying 
on the machinery of Territorial Govern- 
ment without at the same time possess- 
ing any power to originate or initiate 
proceedings, by Convention or otherwise, 
which are to result in the extinction of 
the legislative body ? Their power is, 
ex necessitate rei, bounded by lines which 
keep them from suicide, self-annihila- 
tion : 

" A large proportion of the citizens of 
' Kansas did not think proper to register 



' their names," says the President, " and i 
' to vote at the election for delegates ; 
' but an opportunity to do this having 
' been fairly afforded^ the refusal to ' 
' avail themselves of this right could in 
' no manner affect the legality of the ! 
' Convention." It is now clearly evi- i 
dent that the President was misinformed 
on this subject, it being ascertained not 
only that the citizens had no agency in 
the registration, which was omitted de- 
signedly by the officers having that in i 
charge, but that in nineteen counties there 
was no census, and in fifteen counties 
there was no registry of voters, including 
some of the oldest, most populous, and 
best organized counties ; and in which 
counties, therefore, not a vote could be 
given. But however this may be, I in- 
quire if the Territorial Legislature had 
no power to authorize a Convention to 
change the organic law, how could the 
Convention hind any one to vote, or ab- 
stain from voting, and by what right are 
the original privileges of citizens cur- 
tailed or defeated, because they refuse 
to accept such an empty boon, and go 
through the parade of such meaningless 
forms'? Voting or not voting, the "le- 
gality of the Convention " is not affected ! 
It would have possessed no legality had 
they voted, and it has none now. Not 
having power to authorize a Convention, 
the Legislature had no power to pre- 
scribe the means and processes of calling 
it into being ; the one falls with the 
other. 

II. — The Schedule an illegal Legisla- 
tive Act. 

What has this Convention proposed, 
apart from the Constitution, in a most ex- 
traordinary paper called a "Schedule," 
forming no part of the instrument neces- 
sarily, but dictating the mode of its adop- 
tion and revealing to the people what they 
are permitted to do in regard to it 1 It 
is claimed by the President, that it in- 
tends fairly to carry out the provisions 
and spirit of the organic act of May 30, 
1854 ; and that the Convention proposed 
this Schedule because " the act of the 
' Territorial Legislature omitted to pro- 
' vide for submitting to the people the 



' Constitution which might be framed 
' by the Convention." Sir, I again in- 
quire by what authority did the Conven- 
tion draw up a Schedule dictating to the 
people of Kansas what they might or 
might not do, in reference to this notable 
achievement, by ordering an election on 
the 21st of December last ? The Presi- 
dent graciously tells us " the Conven- 
tion framed it, because the Legislature 
did not; " or, in other words, Congress 
gave no power to the Legislature ; and if 
it did, it has failed to exercise it, and 
therefore the Convention have done it 
themselves. Is this legal 1 There was 
no necessity for it ; the Convention were 
to meet on the first Monday of Septem- 
ber, 185T, but the Legislature doubtless 
supposed they might be a long time in 
deliberation, and that it might be safely 
left to a future Legislature to prescribe 
the mode of its submission to the people. 
Sir, this Schedule, in respect to this 
election, is an assumption, from beginning 
to end. It is nothing more nor less than 
an act of legislation by a single body, 
claiming to be of popular origin, but un- 
approved by any Governor, and having 
none of the features of ordinary legisla- 
tion ; an oligarchic ukase, or decree, as 
Avorthless and inoperative as a falling 
and withered leaf; it binds no one, it 
unbinds no one. The people may re- 
gard or disregard it, with equal impuni- 
ty ; and so it has been looked upon by 
the Territorial Legislature, who post- 
poned the election of the 21st of Decem- 
ber — ordered by the Convention on the 
Constitution — to the 4th of January, 
1858, at which time the only legal ex- 
pression of the popular will was had 
upon it, resulting in its rejection by over 
10,000 votes. Under this Territorial 
law, the election of the 21st of Decem- 
ber was a nullity, and so regarded by 
the people. But it is claimed that the 
Legislature had no power to alter the 
time appointed by the Convention. No 
power ! Why not ? All the legal power 
of the Convention was derived from the 
Legislature; and can the creature say to 
the creator, " I am sovereign'? " Is there 
any question of contract or vested rights 
involved'? Can a legislative body de- 



8 



nude itself of its plenary powers over its 
creatures and agencies, and that too hj 
implication, so that they are held in 
abeyance until resumed by permission 
of the agency ? What novel doctrine is 
this, and to what consequences vrould it 
lead? 

Strange and Inequitable Provisions of 
the Schedule. 

Look at the substance of this Schedule 
in other respects : i 

1. It tenders a ballot with one hand, ' 
and with the other presents a test oath ' 
to support the Constitution, if adopted, ! 
under the pains and penalties of perjury, j 

2. It submits only a single clause to 
the choice of the voter, and he must 
swear to support that for which he can- 
not vote, before he can vote at all upon 
this solitary clause. 

3. It provides that all male inhabit- 
ants over twenty-one, in the Territory 
on the day of election, may vote, thus 
inviting back the hordes who overran it 
in former times, and who promptly re- 
sponded to this invitation, in place of the 
quieter forces drawn from the Cincinnati 
Directory — spiritual voters, dispersed by 
the stroke of the Governor's pen. 

4. The places of holding elections are 
not designated, nor the mode of canvass- 
ing or returning the votes, but all dele- 
gated to three commissioners, named, 
not by the Governor, nor by any respon- 
sible officer, but by the President of this 
Convention, who in this Schedule vio- 
lates the solemn pledges made before his 
election, in writing, to submit the whole 
of this Constitution to the people. 

5. The State election of January, 
1858, was to be conducted under the 
auspices of this same set of judges, and 
we have seen the result of this. 

6. No amendment of the Constitution 
can, by the terms of it, be initiated be- 
fore 1864, nor be perfected short of 1870, 
and then only on two-thirds of the mem- 
bers of each House concurring ; " but no 
' amendment shall ever be made to affect 
' the rights of property in the ownership 
' of slaves." And after reading all this, 
the President adds, " that in the provis- 
' ions of the Schedule providing for the 



' transition from a Territorial to a State 
' Government, the question has been 
' fairly and explicitly referred to the peo- 
'■ple." 

Sir, I take issue with him on all points 
of his allegation. Fairly referred, when 
a test oath bristles in the fore-front of 
the whole proceeding 1 Fairly referred, 
when a single point only is submitted, 
and an oath exacted to support the rest 
of it, on which he has nothing to say? 
Fairly referred, when a stranger may 
vote who has not been there one hour, 
and may never be there again, only in- 
habiting i)ro tempore ? Fairly referred, 
when one man, and such a man, has the 
whale power virtually of ordering the 
polls at inconvenient and unusual places ; 
and is only to count the names returned 
on the poll lists, without any compar- 
ison of them with the ballots, and may 
carry the fate of this people in his pock- 
ets, as he has done, for months 1 What 
idea has the President of fairness, if 
this be the standard he adopts ? Sir, I 
almost admire the daring of this " Rump 
Parliament " of Lecompton. They felt, 
evidently, that the people were not to be 
trusted with political power ; they grasped 
hold of all the functions and prerogatives 
of government ; they rolled the Govern- 
or's head in a basket ; they bound and 
hampered with restrictions and restraints 
the free exercise of the elective franchise ; 
they cut off the people virtually for twelve 
years from the power of change. " They 
had," the President tells us, " an angry 
and excited debate,''^ and graciously con- 
cluded, by a majority of two, to submit 
a single clause of their labors to the peo- 
ple ! Benevolent legislators ! Conde- 
scending Democrats, to confer such a 
boon ! The " factious majority " of Kan- 
sas ought to accept this bounty on their 
knees, or we should abuse them for mu- 
tiny and madness in its rejection ! One 
step more would have rounded out the 
picture ! Like the French Chamber of 
Deputies, that inaugurated the Reign of 
Terror, they should have declared their 
sittings perpetual, organized a standing 
army for its protection, calling it a ^^ posse 
comitatus," by way of euphony, and to 
harmonize with modern nomenclature ! 



Do we read aright, wlien the message 
says, " the Convention was not bound by 
' its terms to submit any other portion 
' of the instrument to an election, except 
' that which relates to the domestic in- 
' stitution of Slavery." Sir, who gave 
to this Convention power to arrogate to 
itself the decision of this question of 
submission or no submission? This 
sounds very much like the language of 
imperialism; it hath an arrogant and 
kingly tone ; it comports only with the 
state and prerogatives of an unques- 
tioned supremacy. No body of men, 
dealing with the first principles of polit- 
ical science, as understood and adminis- 
tered in a representative Republic, have 
a right to use it. No body of men, if 
authorized by the clearest sanctions to 
" propose, form, put in a shape," a Con- 
stitution, can wisely use it. Why not 
bound to submit it 1 Sir, they were bound 
to submit it, every letter and every line 
of it. If this Convention had any show 
of authoi-ity, it was a special agency to do 
a specific act; and, that act done, its 
power ceases. There is no pretence that, 
in the organic act forming the Conven- 
tion, the Legislature bound the people to 
accept any and everything they might do, 
or fail to do ; and that in advance their de- 
crees should be deemed the voice of God, 
like the ravings of Brighami Young. I 
deny, indeed, that any Legislature of State 
or Territory has any power to delegate leg- 
islative functions to a Convention or com- 
mittee, and bind the people in advance to 
their observance; and so thought the 
Kansas Legislature, who refused to rec- 
ognise this assumption of the Convention, 
by ordering the election of the 4th of Jan- 
uary, 1858. 

What Institutions are Dojnestic. 

Yet the President tells us that this sub- 
mission of a single clause carries out the 
spirit of the organic act, and that the 
Convention was not bound to submit the 
whole Constitution, because " nothing 
but Slavery is a domestic institution.''^ 
Well, sir, owing to his Excellency's want 
of experience in the field of domestic re- 
lations, this criticism might be over- 



rights of the gravest import. I had sup- 
posed that the domestic institutions of a 
people, in their coi'porate character as 
Territories or States, and which they 
were " to form and regulate,^' in the ex- 
ercise of political sovereignty, were all 
the institutions of the State, in like man- 
ner as the rules and regulations of the 
household are the domestic institutions 
of home, whether they relate to agri- 
culture, finance, internal improvements, 
chairitable endowments, railways, or the 
terms and conditions of human servitude ; 
and doubtless the power conferred in this 
principle covered all these matters of na- 
tional concern, every one of them full as 
important as the last. So says Webster : 
" Domestic — the afiairs of a State con- 
sidered as a family, in contradistinction 
from foreign." But by the President's 
criticism the domestic institutions of 
Kansas are only " the right of regula- 
ting their domestics.'^ Why are all 
others ignored, and sought to be fastened 
on a people without their consent ? Why 
are they to be cheated by the empty pa- 
rade of a principle, every advantage of 
which is denied them? Is any reason 



for th 



Is it true that no difier- 



ence of opinion exists on other topics'? 
How do we know this? Was not the 
first Constitution proposed for Wiscon- 
sin, with its hard-money policy, sent back 
to the people on that issue, and voted 
down by them? and did not Congress 
embody the principle of submission in 
the Minnesota Territorial bill, and has 
it not become a rule and precedent in 
like cases ? Is this the finale of the doc- 
trine of popular sovereignty? Does it 
culminate in denying them all opportu- 
nity of choice, and must they take such 
institutions as their masters choose to 
give them for twelve j^ears unaltered, be- 
cause they are not " domestic?" Was 
it for this that the pledges and peace of 
thirty years were violated and broken 
up, and bitterness and heart-burning 
spread like fire-brands through every 
part of this wide Confederacy? Was 
ever such price paid, such hazards in- 
curred, for such a boon ? But gentlemen 
say here, it would have been voted down 
if submitted. Is not this a confession 



10 



of the whole iniquity 1 Why would they 
vote it down, but because all men see 
that in the only point pretended to be 
submitted there was a trick and cheat'? 
because important provisions were con- 
tained in the Constitution not submitted, 
relating to banks, the State capital, coun- 
ty seats, the fugitive slave bill, upon 
which the people desired to be heard ? 
because the entire machinery of the State 
Government, Avhich the people had elect- 
ed, was stricken out, and a virtual dicta- 
torship instituted in its room ; because 
it was the consummation and culmination 
of all those foregone acts of tyranny 
which had ground that people in the dust 
for years. But I need not recount all 
the difficulties in the way of the people 
of Kansas, to prevent their swallowing 
this document whole, for the privilege of 
voting on the slave clause. 

The President wants '^ peace and quiet.^^ 

He tells us all other matters are 
of trifling consequence, and that Kan- 
sas has for some years occupied too 
much of public attention. Sir, the Chief 
Magistrate of this Republic ought to re- 
member that no peace or quiet can come 
to a nation, unless justice and equity 
prevail in her councils ; that there is no 
free American heart but will beat fast 
and fiercely under insult and wrong ; 
that resistance and redress dog the foot- 
steps of oppression ; that government 
without representation is tyrrany, how- 
ever disguised ; and that deep down, 
hidden among the earliest maxims the 
men of Kansas drank in from their 
mothers' lips is this, that resistance to 
tyrants is obedience to God. While we 
oppress, they will agitate, though soldiers 
sentinel every doorway, and bayonets 
gleam in every city ; agitate, though 
every school-house be converted into a 
barrack, and every temple of God, like 
the " Old South," of Boston, stables the 
war-horse of the invader ! This agita- 
tion is not aggressive, but protesting 
and defensive. Tread upon the worm, 
and when it squirms complain of agita- 
tion. Open a sore, closed and healed 
by the political surgery of 1850, and 
when the body politic shrinks and trem- 



bles, as the knife goes down through 
marrow and nerve, call this tremor agi- 
tation. Etna may as well complain, 
while her boiling surges work in fierce 
convulsion, that the landscape above is 
not quiet ; while the fibres are raging the 
earth will respond, and if this agitation 
ceases they must fii'st be put out. 
Think you, this young giant of the West, 
stretching his lusty limbs, and conscious 
of his mantling powers, can be crushed 
into quiet by the might of the Federal 
arm, called by the President a ^^ posse 
comitaius ? ''^ What features of simi- 
larity does the President find between 
the standing army and a '■^ posse comita- 
tns?^^ Who does not know that the 
power of the country, its citizens acting 
in aid of its own officers, is as widely dif- 
ferent from the standing array as the 
poles ! In fact, the army was sent there 
to overawe and put down the people and 
their ^^posse.'^ The army is not of the 
people, but acts in obedience to a cen- 
tral and imperial will. " When legal 
' process is executed by the artillery and 
' bayonets of a standing army. Liberty is 
' dead . As well confound the letters de 
' cachet, of the old French regime, Avith 
' the writ of habeas corpus, as the stand- 
' ing army of the Republic with the 
' posse comitatus.^' 

However desirable " peace and quiet," 
they can be purchased at too great a 
sacrifice. A pure despotism is the most 
quiet of all Governments. Better, far 
better, that the initial processes that 
make the foundation stones of empire be 
laid in tempest and hurricane, if justice 
and equity preside over the ceremony, 
and they lie upon the rock; than to 
imbed them beneath a clear sky and un- 
clouded sun, if they rest upon the sand. 
The way to restore peace and harmony 
is to permit the people of Kansas to 
frame their domestic institutions in their 
own way. 

" The People may change this Consti- 
tution in a brief period.^ ^ 1 

But, says the President, with wonder- f 
ful adroitness, " If this Constitution is 
' displeasing to a majority of the people, 
' no human power can prevent their 



11 



' changing it within a brief period." 
Does this look like a desire for peace 
and quiet? to have the Federal Legis- 
lature hang fetters about their necks, 
because no human power can pre- 
vent their breaking them off? Has the 
President well considered what struggles 
and convulsions, what strifes and excite- 
ments, such a change embosoms ; what 
fierce elements it awakens in the conflict, 
of wrong with the show of legitimacy on 
the one side, and of right with the ap- 
pearance of revolution on the other? 
What is this but sowing the wind, to reap 
the whirlwind ? And in how short a 
time can this be done? It cannot be 
initiated until after six years, if we ac- 
cept the assumptions of this instrument. 
One-fifth the average duration of a human 
generation ! Is this statesmanship, or 
time-serving? Tell the exile that in 
a brief period he may again tread his 
native soil, and look upon the faces of 
his friends, and when his eye lightens 
with hope, say to him, after six years, 
and he Avill curse you for a mocking 
fiend ! Tell a free people, now ripe for 
empire, and capable of forming their 
own institutions, that you will fasten 
upon them a Constitution they abhor 
and a policy they despise, and if they 
are not content they can change it in a 
"brief period," and what must they 
think of your wisdom or sincerity ? Sir, 
in this " brief period " this constitutional 
upas tree may entwine its roots and fibres 
into every fissure and crevice of State 
institutions ; it may lock and hold with its 
banded strength every stone and buttress 
of this young member of the Republic, 
mingling itself with every interest and 
diffusing its poison through every avenue, 
until the very capacity of resistance dies 
out, or until men so tantalized and abused 
shake off the dust of their feet upon a 
soil tainted and defiled, and leave this 
fair portion of God's heritage to wither 
and perish in the folds of an influence 
that spares nothing it can grasp. Sir, 
this " brief period " is about as long 
as the Revolutionary War. No free- 
man born on American soil will endure 
it. You may push power so far, and 
defer hope so long, as to provoke instant 



resistance, and exasperate to open de- 
fiance without compromise or dela3^ 

I have thus noticed the absence of all 
legal authority on the part of this quasi 
Lecompton Convention to prepare and 
send this Constitution to Congress for 
ratification or rejection ; that in any 
event the people of Kansas are not to be 
subjected, like a conquered military 
province, to the rescripts of a cen- 
tral power, in respect to the form or 
principles of their Constitution ; that 
the Administration is not consistent with 
its own avowed creed in forcing a Con- 
stitution upon them without their own 
free expression upon the whole, and upon 
every part of it ; that domestic institu- 
tions in a State are something more than 
those regulating household domestics. I 
have exposed the fallacy of the President's 
criticism upon language, as well as his 
reasoning upon affairs of State ; I have 
shadowed out the uselessness and danger 
of pushing a free people beyond the point 
of endurance, and have tried to show 
that justice and fair dealing is the only 
safe policy of nations ; and yet, sir, I am 
admonished by the history of the past 
few years that all this may be in vain. 
Step by step, as with the crushing om- 
nipotence of fate, has the policy which 
now rules the Executive been advancing 
upon us, extending its Briarean arms 
until it enfolds every important interest 
of the Republic in its grasp. No man, 
as Governor or Secretary, has been found 
stern enough to do its behests upon the 
soil of Kansas. One after the other falls 
under the executive guillotine, because 
he cannot quiet the throes of this modern 
Enceladus, that shakes the earth each 
time he moves within his tomb. It is keen, 
active, versatile, tireless — it moulds and 
manages every national expression to a 
single purpose and end — it builds up year 
by year, beneath the calm surface of 
affairs, foundations of empire and ag- 
grandizement, until by a sudden reces- 
sion of the tide they stand revealed to 
the amazement of every eye. It has a 
logic as intuitive as it is sure, and ac- 
cording to which everything has followed 
in its order ; no purpose balked, no 
prophecy of friend or foe unaccomplished, 



12 



but the end is not yet. " Logic," says 
Lamartime, " is the vengeance of God." 
Those messages have awakened a thrill 
of indignation in thousands of bosoms 
which no prior act could move ; they 
have rolled the scales from many an eye 
which, once opened, nothing again can 
darken. Great masses of patriotic men 
have read them in sadness, and arose 
from their perusal as if an eclipse had 
covered up the sun. They have broken 
party ties and party entanglements, ren- 
dered imperative a new mustering of 
forces, and already the hosts are select- 
ing their position, and the hour of prep- 
aration draws on. Sir, let it come. I 
care not who is leader. It is a conflict 
of great principles, now meeting face to 
face. There is no neutrality, no side 
issues, through which to escape the re- 
sponsibility of their direct encounter. 
And yet, say gentlemen in an agnony of 
laudation, " the message is transparent.^'' 
Well, sir, I think it does begin to be 
transparent, riddled like a drooping flag 
run up from the White House ; the big 
rent in the centre shot through by the 
first gun from the Senate, which, trav- 
ersing yon avenue, went point blank to 
the mark. It begins to be a transpa- 
rency, the most transparent thing I ever 
saw, and we can now see stars, not on it, 
but through it. 

" JVon-Intervention.^' 

But, sir, the principle of popular sov- 
ereignty, it now seems, has a new phase 
for the occasion, "non-intervention." 
It is now gravely urged that Congress is 
not to look behind the presentation here of 
a Constitution by the Lecompton Con- 
vention or its agents, but accept it as 
the valid expression of the popular will, 
and so pass it on the principle of non- 
intervention ; on the ground that the 
doctrine of State sovereignty, carried to 
its logical and legitimate results, denies 
to Congress the right of interfei'ing with 
inchoate incipient States, when taking 
the steps for emerging from the condition 
of Territories, precisely in the same 
manner as they have denied its right of 
interference in the organized States them- 
This doctrine is as ridiculous 



as it is wicked. Congress is bound to 
scrutinize and review all the proceedings 
of a Territory in asking for admission, 
to see to the fairness of every step ; that 
no oppression is attempted, no undue 
advantage obtained ; that the Constitu- 
tion proposed is the fair and honest ex- 
pression of the popular will, and will 
promote peace and harmony. Congress 
has no right to separate the science of 
government from ethics, nor encourage 
the dangerous suggestion that Govern- 
ments are not strictly bound by the obli- 
gations of truth, justice, and humanity. 
On this non-intervention principle, it is 
a question of superior speed, or of more 
adroit lying, in the messenger ; the fleet- 
est horse and the boldest front wins the 
day. A whole Directory of names may 
be returned by a corrupt commissioner, 
and the Governor is to certify it by non- 
intervention. It goes to the Legisla- 
ture, and they look only to the impi-ima- 
teur of the Governor, and it passes along 
by non-intervention, and a Delegate 
comes here, never chosen, by non-inter- 
vention. And so of this Constitution. 
If the votes, or their results, on the 21st 
of December, are as false as those re- 
jected by Governor Walker, and every 
member of this House knows it, provided 
they are certified by this roving consti- 
tutional ballot-box, Calhoun, that is an 
estoppel upon Congress, and no man can 
say nay. The argument so often made 
here, that a majority of the new States 
did not first submit their Constitutions 
to the people, cannot be urged by any 
one who approved of, or participated in, 
the repeal of the Missouri compromise 
line ; that act was repealed to assert a 
principle — popular sovereignty. How 
can its authors after that force a Con- 
stitution upon a new State, upon the 
whole of which the popular voice has not 
spoken. They are estopped from as- 
serting and repudiating the same prin- 
ciple in the same breath. .. 

Brief History of Kansas. 

Kansas has a brief but bitter history, 
of misrule and Federal despotism. She 
was organized as a Territory, May 30, 
1854 ; the organic act providing for a 



13 



Governor, Secretary, District Attorney, i 
Marshal, and Judges, to be appointed | 
by the President. By section 22, the 
legislative power is vested in the Gov- 
ernor and a Legislative Assembly, com- 
posed of two Houses — a Council of 
thirteen, chosen for two years, and a 
House of Representatives of thirty-six, 
to continue for one 3''ear — an apportion- 
ment to be made of these among the 
several counties ; and, " Previous to the 
* first election, the Governor shall cause 
' a census of the qualified' voters to be 
' taken" — every free white male inhab- 
itant being a qualified voter. This first 
election, under Governor Reedcr, was to 
take place on the 30th of March, 1855. 
The qualified voters went to the places 
designated, to vote ; what did they find? 
In every Council district, and in every 
Representative district but one, an armed 
mob from an adjoining State in posses- 
sion of the ballot boxes, and voting for 
members of the Territorial Legislature; 
4,900 of them doing this treason to the 
rights of the people of Kansas, and 
usurping the Government over them. 
The Governor was appalled by this in- 
vasion, and attempted to correct it, but 
had not the means of reaching the evil. 
Members, actually elected in some dis- 
tricts, to whom he gave certificates, were 
rejected by the creatures of the 4,900 
invaders. This quasi Legislature opened 
its sittings, and assumed to pass a hodj 
of laws, which would not be credited, had 
not paper and type immortalized their 
infamy with that of their authors — a 
Draco code, more infernal than the bloodj^ 
and barbarous edicts of the tyrants of 
eight centuries ago. 

The actual voters of Kansas, having 
no voice in all this work of the invading 
hordes, peaceably assembled, and in Con- 
vention framed a Constitution ; submit- 
ted the whole of it to the people, by whom 
it was approved, and asked for admis- 
sion under it into the Union. They were 
rejected, because the Federal Govern- 
ment, in the face of all the facts to the 
contrary, assumed that the Government 
of the invaders was a legal Government, 
and pledged itself to maintain that usurp- 
ation. The President became particejos 



criminis to this outrage upon popular 
rights, and then commenced that series 
of measures, unparalleled in the history 
of this country, to force a Government 
upon an unvnlling peojile. 

The standing army was summoned 
from every accessible post, and bayonets 
thrust at the throats of freemen, to com- 
pel them to form and regulate their do- 
mestic institutions in their own way. 

Unwillingness to submit to a gang of 
marauders was denominated treason, and 
shooting and hanging were freely threat- 
ened to those who desired fairness and 
freedom in matters which concerned only 
themselves. 

After the failure of several Governors 
io reconcile a free people to this combined 
local and Federal usurpation. Governor 
Walker was chosen, as peculiarly fitted, 
first, to legalize the fraud in the eye of 
the people, if possible, and if not able 
to do this, then to bring the Territory 
into the Union as an Africanized Demo- 
cratic State. His own letters to the 
President, as well as his instructions 
from that functionary, abundantly prove 
this. Two years had passed away in 
bitterness and broil — two years of mis- 
rule, tyranny, and usurpation. A law 
was passed by this ruffian Legislature, 
authorizing the election of a Convention 
to frame a Constitution, ignoring the one 
already rejected by Congress. 

The people insisted on an organization 
of the election districts, and a registra- 
tion of legal voters, before going into an- 
other election. This was denied them, 
and they could not, therefore, vote. Not 
one-ninth of the voters in the Territory 
did or could vote. That one-ninth elected 
the members of the Lecompton Conven- 
tion — Calhoun and his associates pledg- 
ing themselves on paper to submit the 
whole Constitution to be framed by them 
to the people. This pledge is shame- 
fully violated, and the President endorses 
it — quibbling about domestic institu- 
tions. 

An election is held upon the slave 
clause' — the people indignantly refusing 
to participate in the farce, but condemn- 
ing the whole of it by the authority of 
the Legislature, on the 4th of January, 



14 



1858. Directories are copied, to furnish 
a show of voters on these occasions, and 
even Gov. Walker and Secretary Stan- 
ton, Presidential pets, are guillotined for 
declining to endorse the frauds. 

A last farce in the Territory is en- 
acted in the election, under this pre- 
tended Constitution, of State officers.^ by 
an apportionment based upon the fraud- 
ulent and spurious votes of non-residents 
in the Territory. 

And even this farce cannot be played 
out, without forgery and perjury — 1,400 
votes being certified as given in two pre- 
cincts — more than there are residents 
there ; and, finally, the denouement of the 
whole is dug up from beneath a wood pile, 
and now forms the last plank in the plat- 
form of the present Democratic party, 
every man of whom must endorse all 
this unblushing wickedness and usurpa- 
tion, before he can vote for the admission 
of Kansas under this Lecompton Con- 
stitution. 

And this com.plication of wrong and 
outrage, perpetrated under the protection 
of Federal bayonets, is called legal ! and 
gentlemen here, who would scorn to do a 
private wrong, call this result of infamy 
a legal Government ! God forbid. Call 
it anything but legal. It is revolution- 
ary, tyrannous, despotic, forcible, fraud- 
ulent; anything but legal. What! a 
paper stating that five hundred and 
forty- two votes were given, when forty- 
two were cast, a legal paper ! or a 
forgery and fraud! Do not desecrate 
the law, by subsidizing even its forms to 
such mocking rascality ; on this prin- 
ciple, a counterfeit note is legal. 

How the President Desires to Live in 
the Affections of the People. 

Why is this Constitution pressed with 
such vehement importunity ? The more 
emphatically the people condemn it, the 
more fierce is the Executive persistency. 
The most unblushing frauds upon the 
ballot-boxes are detected and exposed, 
yet their shameless perpetrators lose 
none of their influence or regard. Gov- 
ernors and Secretaries who yield to the 
popular will are promptly rebuked and 
decapitated. 



The military power is retained in Kan- 
sas, for the avowed purpose of keeping 
down the people, and compelling sub- 
mission to a Government they abor. And 
yet the President says he has " no other 
' object of earthty ambition than to leave 
' his country in a prosperous and peace- 
' ful condition, and to live in the affec- 
' tions and respect of his coimtrymen.^^ 
Live in the aifections and respect of the 
American people, when the popular will 
is trampled on or disregarded, and legal 
quibbles resorted to for the purpose of 
reconciling them to a despotism until 
they can shake it off? Live in the affec- 
tions of the American people, when every 
western breeze comes laden with the cry 
of Executive oppression, which, if perpe- 
trated by a King of Great Britain, would 
cost him his crown and his head ? Sir, I 
wish the Executive would remember that 
no man can live there who plants the foot 
of power on the neck of Freedom, who 
throws the sword into the scale in the 
contests of the ballot-box, and brings all 
the machinery of governmental influence 
to bear upon subjecting an unwilling peo- 
ple to the despotism Of his will. 

What has any portion of our country 
to gain by such tyranny 1 Will it sat- 
isfy the North 1 Tha throb of the great 
Northern heart is that of sadness and in- 
dignation; the recent defenders of the 
President there are silent, and those who 
do not eat his bread are dumb. Will it 
satisfy the East? The Stamp Act and 
Tea Tax of a foreign Ministry were a 
feather in the scale, beside the grinding 
and insulting oppression of this measure. 
They fought, and we fought with them, 
for a jwinciple ; but here a principle has 
ripened into a crushingyaci( ; they fought 
for that principle with the standing army 
of a mighty empire encamped at their 
doors. Is the East less patriotic now, and 
will she trample on a foreign foe and bow 
tamely to a domestic tyranny'? Will it 
satisfy the South ? No, sir ! I think 
I know something about Southern senti- 
ment and Southern honor. The history 
of our country blazes with the record of 
heroic achievements, pa.triotic loyalty, 
and devotion to our national flag, which 
her sons have exhibited on every battle 



15 



field and in every council hall, from the 
day when Morgan's riflemen followed the 
daring Arnold through a northern wil- 
derness to Quebec, through all the strife 
and sufferings of the Revolutionary era 
to this hour. How her chivalric spirit 
responds to what is upright and true; 
how danger has been defied, peril en- 
countered, and sacrifices welcomed, if 
they contributed to the strength and glory 
of our common country. I remember her 
Washington, and Jefferson, and Madi- 
son, her Sumter, and Pinckney, and 
Marion, their deeds of renown — our com- 
mon heritage, their fame national and 
immortal ; the voices of her Clay and 
Preston, yet resounding through the 
arches of these halls, and never raised 
but to- testify their devotion to the insti- 
tutions they honored and the country they 
loved. Sir, the great Southern heart, 
fervid and valorous as it is, will scorn to 
do a wrong. No temporary exasperation 
will satisfy its calm conscience, when 
memory holds up the record of an evil 
deed. To a generous heart, the sting of 
a wrong inflicted is keener than of a 
wrong endured. Will it satisfy the 
West, those young and growing empires, 
just emerged from Territorial pupilage, 
and already mightier than most of the 
old thirteen States ? Will they approve 
of a policy to Avhich they would have 
scorned submission, and stand tamely by, 
while the foot of Federal oppression is 
planted on the neck of a friend and 
brother'? Will it satisfy anything but 
a dogged fanaticism of purpose, formed 
against the dictates of sound reason, 
and persisted in, in defiance of the remon- 
strances of nine-tenths of the nation? 

Would that the President and his 
counsellors would remember that the 
path of empire is glorious only when 
illumined by the lustre of virtue and 
justice. The efforts of nations, age after 
age, to settle upon permanent found- 
ations, have failed — signally and uni- 
formly failed — because power was not 
wielded by principle, because public am- 
bition was venal and selfish, because the 
hand that swayed the sceptre, and the 
tongue that ruled the will, were pledged 
and prostituted to craft and crime, and 



so man could not attain happiness be- 
cause he was not free; and he Avas not 
free because the wielders of government- 
al power brought its whole enginery of 
intimidation and corruption to bear so 
heavily upon his personal, social, and 
political being, that not only the desire, 
but the capacity to use and enjoy liberty 
was crushed out of him. It was only a 
few heroic hearts here and there that, 
like solitary altars, sent up the flame un- 
quenched and unquenchable. Asiatic 
Governments, in all their phases, never 
presented the true idea — they were un- 
mixed despotisms. The Greek and Ro- 
man illustrated it in caricature and dis- 
tortion, but it grew in England under a 
free Bible and a free press. It flickered 
here and there under the throne of the 
First Charles, until it broke forth in wide 
display in the trumpet tones of Hamp- * 
den, Russell, and Sidney; in the lofty 
strains of Milton, ringing like a superb 
anthem of " hallelujahs and harping sym- 
phonies ; " in the iron trumpet of Crom- 
well's legions, and in the solemn utter- 
ances of Puritanic prayer; and on the 
breath of that prayer it was wafted in 
the May Flower across the Atlantic. 

Look into the rotunda of this Capitol, 
and see Robinson, Bradford, and Miles 
Standish, and those pioneers of liberty 
on their knees, before they embark. But 
even here in the howling wilderness, the 
hand of oppression lay heavy upon them; 
and as colony after colony grew up, the 
stern patience, the heroic fortitude, the 
overcoming faith, that battled with a 
savage foe and conquered him, that 
struggled with a sterile soil and sub- 
dued it — these virtues, so grand and so 
ennobling, were rewarded by imposition, 
tyranny, and wrong, until patience be- 
came criminal, and acquiescence a dead- 
lier evil than revolt. 

I The declaration of our independence 
I followed — not a mass of " glittering gen- 
eralties," composed and finished up for 
school-boy declamation and rhetorical 
effect, but every letter and line of which 
was burned into the souls of those who com- 
posed it. Sir, it was not only an announce- 
ment of eternal principles, founded in the 
nature of man, on his equality, on his in- 



ll 



telligence, on his responsibility, but it was 
an indignant protest against the galling 
fetters he was determined no more to 
wear, and the blighting humiliations to 
which he had resolved never again to 
submit. Every word leaped forth from 
the living experience of men freeborn, 
who felt that humanity owned a common 
brotherhood and merited a kindred des- 
tiny ; and now, sir, through all the expe- 
riences of former years, since that great 
declaration of human rights has been 
given to the world, since it was even 
sanctioned and acknowledged to some 
extent by the ancient nations whose sway 
it had broken, and whose policy it had 
frustrated and rebuked, it has gone forth 
over this continent, building up and ani- 
mating State after State, moulding their 
institutions, dictating their laws and 
shaping their interests, giving them har- 
mony, stability, and strength, until all 
at once we are brought to a stand, and 
here, in this Capitol, which it has builded 
and adorned, here, on this high altar, 
consecrated to Freedom, we find men who 
disclaim its holy evangel, and believe they 
have succeeded in turning against it some 
of the grandest institutions reared to il- 
lustrate its spirit and excend its blessings. 



Would to God that the spirit of pa- 
triotism and self-sacrifice which animated 
the men that framed it would come back 
to her forsaken altars ! Would to God 
that, forgetting all differences, and bury- 
ing all discords, we could deliberate on 
every subject in a spirit such as pervaded 
the nation when State after State wheeled 
into rank under the banner of the Consti- 
tution, and strove which should be fore- 
most in every noble and patriotic achieve- 
ment ; that, rising above all party lines 
and party ties, we could open our Qjes 
wide enough to see what a sublime destiny 
lies in the future, if we rem.ain true to 
the principles on which the pillars of our 
national greatness and renown repose ; 
and blessed as we are with a heritage 
such as no living generation beside pos- 
sesses — our broad domain washed by two 
oceans, our steamers plying in every 
zone, and our canvas whitening every 
sea, our vallej^s smiling with abundance, 
and our cities glittering with the trophies 
of industry and art — let us beware how 
we imperil it all in the mere lust of 
party power, perchance to be wielded 
only amidst the desolations of civil 
war! 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




016 094 469 9 



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Conservation Resources 



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